Senior Backend Engineer, Markets (Kenya) at Tala (formerly InVenture)

We are looking for an experienced program and product management leader with strong team-building skills and ability to create strong connections with the customer and partner ecosystem in the region. As companies embark on their digital transformations, they turn to the Microsoft Identity and Network Access Division to give them secure, convenient, manageable, digital relationships with employees, customers, and business partners. Tens of thousands of organizations and millions of users are successfully using Microsoft Identity services, such as Azure Active Directory, every month. Hundreds of thousands of developers are building powerful and secure applications that authenticate users with Microsoft Identity Platform or access high value data in the Microsoft cloud (such as Microsoft 365 or Azure) with cloud APIs such as Microsoft Graph.

In this role, you will manage, train and recruit talent to build a world-class program management team based in Nairobi. You will lead the team to ship new features that help customers better manage identity related scenarios in their organizations. You will establish an outreach and connection to our top customers and partners (ISVs, system integrators) to build strong partnerships that result in customer and partner input into the product, and adoption of Microsoft Identity solutions in the marketplace.

There is a lot of cross-team collaboration and customer or partner connection you and your team will be involved in - you will lead by example in customer empathy (including customers in IT, developer, or user roles). You will need to be proficient at creating and maintaining a positive team spirit and strong relationships with remote teams, customers and partners distributed around the globe. You will teach your team how to experiment effectively, use various sources of data, to learn and apply a growth mindset. You will keep an eye out on competitors and industry developments to build a product and platform strategy that continues to establish Microsoft Identity offerings as a leader in the cloud. You will learn a lot about Identity technologies and offerings, and about cloud security. The skills and experience you build in these roles will be valuable for years to come as organizations go through a digital transformation.

Responsibilities

• Lead a world-class program management team.
• Engage with the broader community in East Africa to build a talent pipeline and effective partnerships with academia, government, and the tech ecosystem
• Manage budgets, operations for the team
• Own the charter for a set of product features, for which:
• Create a network of customer and partner connections to influence product design and drive market adoption of Microsoft Identity services.
• Analyse data and customers (including IT administrators, application developers, or end users), and use customer insights to drive clarity of product requirements with feature teams, partner teams, user research, design, marketing, and support to meet customer needs.
• Monitor industry and competitive trends in developer experience for identity and contribute to product strategy.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of product management experience building commercial software
• Bachelor’s Degree in a technical or engineering discipline
• Proven track record as a great team builder and people manager
• Experience in evangelism, customer connection, marketing, or community building
• Demonstrated experience understanding customer needs (IT, developer, end users) and problem solving with customer empathy
• Experience with security, identity, authentication, or authorization-related technologies highly desirable
• Collaboration, communication, partnering skills

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.